Jack Straw: It gives me great pleasure to open this debate on the Gracious Speech. That speech outlined a number of Bills and proposals, led by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and myself, which will affect the lives of the British people in many ways. Among them are the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill, which has just been presented, the counter-terrorism Bill, the draft citizenship and immigration Bill, the draft constitutional renewal Bill, and proposals in respect of party finance and expenditure. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will of course deal with those issues for her Department directly when she speaks later today.
	This is a legislative programme that builds on this Government's record over the past almost 11 years—11 years that have seen record investment and improvement in the national health service, 600,000 fewer children in poverty and 6 million more people in work.  [ Interruption. ] Thank you very much. All these are facts, so I look forward to cheering from both sides. Over those 11 years, crime is down by a third, police numbers are up by 12 per cent., and there has been a 300 per cent. increase in the money invested in services for victims and witnesses. Some 1.5 million cases were brought justice just last year, and the chance of being a victim of crime is lower than at any time in the past 26 years. In those 11 years, we have greatly modernised and strengthened our constitutional arrangements—and, through that, our democracy—by strengthening Select Committees, through freedom of information, data protection and human rights legislation, through devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and through the removal of the vast majority of hereditary peers from the House of Lords.

Jack Straw: My right hon. Friend does not need to go to a bookshop for it, because she has learnt it off by heart, as I learn her speeches by heart. She will, of course, give a rendition of part of that speech when she winds up later.
	All the changes that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is leading and which he set out in his historic, first statement as Prime Minister to the House on 3 July, are designed to establish a better balance between order and liberty, responsibility and freedom—and, whenever possible, to do so by consensus. That informs my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary's approach to the complex and difficult issue of how best and fairly to bring international terrorists, who threaten the whole fabric of our society, to justice. She will speak at more length on that issue when she winds up the debate.

Jack Straw: The hon. Gentleman has taken a very consistent approach to the incorporation of the 1998 Act, and has been absolutely firm on the issue. Indeed, when asked whether a Conservative version of a British Bill of Rights would make it easier to deport suspected terrorists to countries that might torture them, he replied on the record that he did not think that it would. We are grateful to him for that clarification; I hope that he has told the shadow Home Secretary.
	The answer to the hon. Gentleman, which he understands—I do not say that condescendingly—is this: in the convention, there are some rights on which there is very little margin of appreciation for any nation that adheres to the convention. That includes article 3, which is the basis of the Chahal judgment. On others, there is quite a wide margin of appreciation. The whole argument, originally led, in 1987, by the former distinguished Conservative Member the late Edward Gardner in a private Member's Bill in favour of incorporation, was that if we incorporated the provisions our courts would be able to adjudicate on them—and, yes, to gloss them, to use the hon. Gentleman's phrase. That is what they have sought to do.
	I invite the hon. Gentleman to await the publication of the Green Paper. However, in our judgment there are other areas in which, entirely consistently with the convention, the practice of Strasbourg and the margin of appreciation, greater discretion could be given—for example, in respect of article 13 on remedies, which is not incorporated, and of article 17, which deals with the abuse of rights and has not been developed as much as it should have been. That could be done without detracting in any sense from some of the fundamental rights, which I mentioned to the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith), that go with being a human being and nothing else.

David Davis: I acknowledge that the hon. Gentleman makes a serious point. The raw truth is that comparisons are not easy. We are now considering non-Commonwealth countries—

Julian Lewis: My question is closely related to the one that my right hon. Friend has just answered. The only other aspect of the Government's case which we keep hearing is that vast quantities of computerised material have to be gone through. However, it is not at all clear whether such quantities, assuming that they are not encrypted, are vast quantities of rubbish concealing a few important nuggets of information or vast quantities of vital information. It is hard to see why there have to be gigabytes of vitally important information, let alone anything larger. Therefore, the vast quantities of material are presumably rubbish covering the important bits. In that event, it would always be possible for terrorists to pile on more and more gigabytes to conceal the bits that matter. There might therefore be no end to the amount of time for which the Government could require people to be detained in order to go through it.

David Davis: My hon. Friend has a point. The number that the Home Secretary bandied around this morning was three terabytes or 3,000 gigabytes, which would work out at about 100 gigabytes a suspect. I recommend that hon. Members go and look at their computers. If, like me, they keep everything for ever, I recommend that they look at their lifetime of gathered data. I doubt whether those data would come to anything like 100 gigabytes or even 25 megabytes.
	One of the questions that will be put to the Home Secretary—not now; we shall give her notice of it—is whether the vast quantities of data that she has talked about involve just the capacity of the disks or whether they involve all the software on those disks, such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Windows and so on, all of which is checkable and removable in an instant. Then we shall see whether the problem is really what it is cracked up to be. If the Government want to look at the issue properly, the serious problem is not the encryption or the sheer volume, but the issue of foreign language translation. I hope that we shall talk about that in practical terms when we come to the main debate on the legislation.
	The House should not forget that cross-party co-operation delivered a range of new offences to enable the police to charge anybody—and I mean anybody—involved in a terrorist plot. That was done at great length, at our suggestion and, to give them their credit, the Liberal Democrats' suggestion, in the debate on 90 days. Acts preparatory to terrorism, encouragement to terrorism, dissemination of terrorist publications, and terrorist training offences, in addition to the pre-existing offences of possessing information for terrorist purposes, recruiting for terrorist training and inciting overseas terrorism—all are criminal offences. What has been lacking is the determination to make the full use of the law and that powers that we have already.
	The previous Home Secretary understood those arguments and came up with another scenario, in the earlier stage of the discussion. He said, "Okay, we can cope with one Heathrow reasonably easily, but what if we had five all at once? We'd be overwhelmed." That is the circumstance under which, we argue, the Government should invoke the state of emergency provisions in the Civil Contingencies Act 2004. The definition is very simple and involves an emergency that poses a serious threat to the public, overwhelming the Government's ability to defend the public.
	The powers in the 2004 Act are quite sweeping and include the power to hold without charge for up to 30 days, over and above any period under existing legislation. So, in a state of emergency—but only in a state of emergency—the Government already have the power to hold for 58 days. The scenario described by the previous Home Secretary involved 50 airliners coming under attack. That is clearly a state of emergency. Such a power would of course require the Government to justify their action after the event to both the House of Commons and the courts, but they say that they want proper scrutiny and control over the process. For such an incursion of liberty, that is a good thing.
	The Government complain about that process, which they designed, remember. They say that it would alarm and panic the public—this from a Government who habitually issue blood-curdling assessments of the threat, describing it as the biggest threat since the second world war. I consider that objection to be unutterable nonsense, first, because it underestimates the British public, who withstood 3,000 deaths under the Northern Irish troubles and who faced that many deaths in a single night at the height of the blitz; secondly, because the public would expect a state of emergency if 50 airliners were about to be blown out of the sky; and thirdly, because there would be no immediate need to declare such a state of emergency, as the Government would have 28 days before they ran out of time under the counter-terrorism Bill. In that time the state of the nation would be all too clear to the public.
	The Home Secretary has suggested that that demonstrates that we accept the principle of the need to go beyond 28 days. That is a facile argument. It should be clear that we do not accept the need to extend detention without charge based on either the evidence of the operations to date or the most horrific hypothetical scenarios so far dreamt up by Ministers.
	Let me explain the matter to the Home Secretary by quoting from a document that I hope that she already has ready, the House of Lords judgment that struck down the Government's arguments on control orders last week. In it, Lord Brown said that the right to liberty
	"represents a fundamental value and is absolute in its terms...Liberty is too precious a value to be discarded except in times of genuine national emergency...None is suggested here."
	The important phrase there is
	"except in times of genuine national emergency".
	That is the requirement that must be fulfilled before we give up our fundamental liberties, and this is the crux of the matter. Rather than having— [ Interruption. ] Did the Home Secretary say something about control orders? This is about rather more than control orders. This is about people being locked up for 56 days, in case she has forgotten the main thrust of her argument.
	This is the crux of the matter. The Home Secretary is arguing that, rather than having a temporary, declared state of emergency, the Government want a permanent, undeclared state of emergency. To choose that is to reject the tradition of liberty in this country that has been paid for by hundreds of thousands of British lives over the past century. The Government argue that the enemy is getting more sophisticated and the plots more complex, and they demand more time. The presumption is that the plotters are getting better but that we are not. I do not accept that defeatist argument. It is one that we will explore in great detail on Second Reading of the counter-terrorism Bill.
	The House should heed the warnings of those on the front line in counter-terrorism—which the Government try to use in a way that they might not appreciate—about the counter-productive implications of extended detention without charge. The former head of MI5, Stella Rimington, has warned explicitly against this "increasingly draconian" measure. Sir Ronnie Flanagan has warned us to
	"take great care not to over-react...not to do the job of the terrorists for them."
	The Met's senior counter-terrorism officer, Peter Clarke, warns against destroying the trust that
	"fundamentally affects the level of support...and of course intelligence...that we receive from communities".
	Even this week, the head of MI5—who notably did not mention 28 or 56 days in his speech—has cautioned:
	"The terrorists may be indiscriminate in their violence against us...but we should not be so in our response to them."
	Extending detention without trial will, like ID cards and control orders, undermine our freedoms, but it will not make us safer. In fact, it risks making the threat worse. Looking round the Chamber, I see that almost everyone here is wearing a poppy. Those poppies represent an enormous sacrifice. Tomorrow morning at 11 o'clock, many of us will be standing in the regimental plots in the grounds of Westminster Abbey, paying our respects to the soldiers who paid for our freedom with their lives. Our freedom was bought at a very high price. We on this side will not give that freedom away without very good reason.

Nicholas Clegg: Legislation on identity cards, legislation removing the distinction between innocence and guilt in DNA databases, legislation restricting the right to protest in Parliament—I could go on. I will send the right hon. Gentleman a list.
	Having said all that, we must be mindful of the fact that eight counter-terrorism Bills and six immigration Bills have already been introduced, so the fact that a new counter-terrorism Bill and immigration Bill are to be introduced does not suggest that the habits of legislating to deal with problems that are not always susceptible to legislation have been entirely left behind.
	Following the Secretary of State for Justice's extraordinary Panglossian, rose-tinted account of his Government's record on law and order and the criminal justice system, I am tempted to remind him that this Government have presided over criminal, inhumane levels of overcrowding in our prison system, the highest rates of reoffending in the western world, sky high rates of public fear about crime and an absolute collapse in the morale of our criminal justice system—from a probation service that is on its knees to an almost permanent state of antagonism between the Government and the judiciary.
	None the less, I should like to focus my remarks on the counter-terrorism Bill, and I thank the Home Secretary for our meetings on its provisions, which she will introduce in the weeks ahead. She knows that we already agree on plenty of things, and that plenty of things will deserve much greater scrutiny once we see the details. That being so, it is all the more curious that the Government appear so determined to reopen the vexed debate about the period during which the police can detain any of us without charge, and that she seems to have made such a beeline for an issue that is divisive, wrong in practice and wrong in principle.
	As I have said to the Home Secretary, the suspicion arises that the reason for all that is politics rather than the lack of evidence. Is she labouring under the need to meet the political pledge made by the then Chancellor, now Prime Minister, back in November last year—I quote  The Independent headline: "Brown backs 90 day detention for terror suspect"? That was in the good all days when everyone expected great things of him. No doubt it seemed to him a good idea to talk tough on terrorism as he was crowbarring his way into No. 10. But should we really change the law just because of prime ministerial posturing? Should the Home Secretary become a prisoner of prime ministerial political machismo? I do not think so.
	The Government always used to claim that they were wedded to evidence-based policy making, yet we know, by their own admission, that there is no evidence whatever for the move. The  New Statesman noted in an interview with the Home Secretary in early August that
	"she cannot cite an example of an existing case that would have benefited from an extension".
	In addition to that uncertainty, she said this morning that she does not know how far she would want to extend the period during which the police may detain people without charge. Yet one of her security Ministers said on Monday, on Sky television, that he thought it would be
	"up to 56 days probably".
	What on earth is going on?
	I have heard some pretty odd arguments for the extension of the period during which the police may detain people without charge. The weirdest of all referred to the case of Kafeel Ahmed, one of the terror attackers at Glasgow airport, who fell into a coma and subsequently died in hospital. It has been suggested on several occasions that he might have needed more than 28 days of questioning. That is absurd—the clock starts ticking when someone is formally detained. Why would we need to detain someone who is in a coma in a hospital bed? Surely we would wait until they had come to before starting questioning?
	The Government have said euphemistically that they can "envisage a scenario" in which the change might become necessary. I can envisage all sorts of outlandish scenarios. I can envisage one in which France might wish to invade England, but I do not suggest that we should legislate to close the channel tunnel overnight.
	As I said to the Home Secretary, there are plenty of things that we can do together. Some of them are already covered under the Government's plans, particularly post-charge questioning, which we welcome; some are not. As she knows, we have long advocated the more aggressive use of plea bargaining to garner information on terrorist masterminds. As she also knows, there is still a strong case to clarify the way in which the Crown Prosecution Service uses the so-called threshold test so that charges may be brought in the first place, even if all the evidence has not been fully gathered. As she also knows, my party has long felt that there is a strong case to make intercept evidence admissible in court.
	Collectively, those changes would go a long way to removing the concerns, such as they are, about the guillotine effect of the 28-day deadline. Surely it is more sensible for us to invest our time and political energies in this place in exploring the issues on which we enjoy genuine cross-party consensus, rather than unnecessarily open Pandora's box on the issue once again.
	The Government talk soothingly about the need to create consensus, but there already is a consensus and it is shared by the Home Affairs Committee, the Joint Committee on Human Rights, campaigners such as Liberty, the Government's former Attorney-General and the Opposition parties. The consensus is based on evidence—the evidence on which we extended the period from seven to 14 days in 2003, and from 14 to 28 days just two years ago. Are we going to return to the issue over and over again? Surely not.
	There is also the evidence that we already have the longest period of detention without charge in—I choose my words carefully, in view of the earlier debate—any comparable common law system on the planet. Most importantly, because of the evidence that is shared by the security services, the police and others, rushing forward without compelling reason risks alienating opinion in exactly the communities that we need on our side.
	Extremist preachers of hate will seek to radicalise youngsters in their communities, whatever we do. Surely we have learned by now, however, that breathless talk about the war on terrorism, or sloppy anti-terror legislation, gives them needless additional ammunition to sustain their twisted and misguided grievances.
	In the debate about 28 days, the Prime Minister has a fundamental problem. Yesterday's Queen's Speech could have been delivered word for word by his predecessor, not least on this issue. What is the point of a new Prime Minister if he delivers the same old menu of his predecessor? When will the Prime Minister learn, on this issue above all, that repackaging the failures of his predecessor is simply a road to nowhere?
	Before I conclude, I should like to comment on, and ask questions about, immigration. The Government's position seems deeply confused. I read on Monday a headline in the  Evening Standard� Brown battles back with 35,000 cut in migration. In  The Daily Telegraph on the same day I read, Migrants to be made to learn English. That all comes hot on the heels of the entirely implausible and almost certainly illegal pledge to deliver British jobs for British people.
	So why is there a deafening silence on all those issues in the Queen's Speech? Will those breathless pledges be delivered, and, if so, how will they be justified? I think that the House deserves to know.
	Over the past 10 yearsand it has come back to haunt themthe Government have combined the worst of both worlds on immigration. They have combined tough-talking, headline-grabbing populism with serial administrative incompetence.
	The Liberal Democrats start with three simple principles. First, an immigration system and the levers of its administration need to work. That is why we have long advocatedeven before the Conservatives jumped on the bandwagonan integrated border force with real resources and the right police powers, so that we know who is coming into and going out of the country.
	Secondly, the Government should plan for the consequences of immigration, particularly in local areas where there are rapid changes of population. That is why it is essentialand we have always advocated thisthat central Government grants to local government are provided more quickly, and reflect changes in local demographical statistics more quickly. It is also why, in the long run, we will continue to campaign for a genuine devolution of tax-raising powers, so that communities can decide for themselves to allocate resources where they are under pressure locally.
	Finally, the Government should promote integration alongside immigration. They are two sides of the same coin. That is why it is self-defeating in the extreme for the Government to cut, rather than promoting or expanding, the resources for English language learning; and that is why I remain genuinely perplexed by the fact that both Government and Conservatives are prepared to turn a blind eye to the reality that hundreds of thousands of people are living, long term, in a twilight zone of illegality and exploitation, not paying taxes, and in the hands of some of the most evil criminal gangs in the country. It is shameful that neither of the other parties is prepared to face that reality head-on.

Ann Cryer: Let me begin by apologising to my right hon. Friends on the Front Bench. I am going to talk about things that I know they have heard me talk about before, but if I stop talking about those things they might forget. It is just a reminder.
	The Queen's Speech refers to a draft Bill on citizenship and immigration. I ask for that Bill to contain a requirement for those who entered the country as husbands or wives for permanent settlement not to be allowed to act as sponsors of wives or husbands from abroad until they have acquired British citizenshipthat is, five years after entry. At present, on gaining indefinite leave to remain, an incoming spouse or applicant can leave the spouse who sponsored him or her, immediately acquire a second
	spouse, and sponsor him or her to enter the country for permanent settlement. Many of my female constituents would go further and suggest that no one given leave to enter as a result of marriage should be allowed to sponsor a second wife, but I would not go as far as that.
	It is conservatively estimated that 70 per cent. of members of Asian communities in northern towns and cities have arranged marriages with spouses from the sub-continentin the case of the Pakistani community, the spouse is usually a cousinand that necessarily has a knock-on effect on society in the United Kingdom. It is estimated that only 3 per cent. of women are literate in the Mirpur area of Pakistan, where the overwhelming majority of the Pakistani community in places such as Keighley originate. It is therefore not surprising that primary schools in my constituency, along with those in many other northern towns and cities, face the challenge of 95 per cent. of their annual intake being unaware of the existence of English as a language when they first go to school.
	Satellite television and the increasing ghettoisation of communities, linked with an emphasis on transcontinental marriages and a lack of literacy on the subcontinent, has resulted in 50 per cent. of the Asian community in the Bradford districtincluding my constituencyhaving no English. That affects not only migrants but those born here. Bilingual or multilingual talent must be nurtured and developed as a great skill, but neglect of the common language in societies and economies is dangerous.
	The teachers and schools in Keighley, like many others throughout the north, do an exceptional job in difficult circumstances, but whatever the value added by their valiant efforts to help the children in their care, the fact remains that the start of those children's educational life has been impeded from the outset. From the very beginning, the level playing field that ought to be the right of every child is being denied to them. Such children are discriminated against by the tradition of their own community, and the results can be seen later in their lives. The Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities underachieve significantly at GCSE, in higher education and in employment compared with other migrant communities, or indeed the host community.
	According to Britain's Immigrants, a recent report by the Institute for Public Policy Research, 50 per cent. of the Pakistani community and 48 per cent. of the Bangladeshi community in the United Kingdom are economically inactive. Migration from an area where poverty and illiteracy are the norm merely transfers the problem to the new area if it is not addressed or accepted to be a problem.

Alan Beith: I wonder whether the right hon. and learned Gentleman is still feeling the pain of the many judgments against the Home Office during the time when he was Home Secretary. In so far as there may be truth in what he says, there is another reason not to have confirmation hearingsto ensure that we continue to have a process of choosing judges for their objectivity, not one in which we seek to place in position judges who might give the result that particular Governments want at particular times. The process that he attributes to the Human Rights Act was always likely to go on anyway, but in Strasbourg rather than in our own courts. I am rather more confident of the ability of our own judges, against the background of our tradition, to be as objective as it is possible to be in the kind of situation that he describes than I am about a mixed panel of judges who come from very many different traditions.
	Another problem arises from the changes that the Government have madethat we will be plucking from the House of Lords the Law Lords, who without any doubt made extremely valuable contributions to debate, although in the constitutionally difficult situation that, until they resolved that they were not going to do it any more, they were potentially framing legislation on which they might subsequently pass judgment. That has not been the practice in recent years because they decided to absent themselves from issues on which they might give judgment or cases on which they had previously spoken during the passage of the original legislation. We will lose from the House of Lords that ability to learn how things will affect, or have affected, the judiciary. Following discussions that I had with the past and present Lord Chief Justice, my Committee has successfully developed the solution that judges from every level should appear before the Committee, which then reports to the House on the evidence that they have given on issues such as how the judiciary is coping with the pressures on it or the working of particular pieces of legislation. Such questions are divorced from the political process, and we have posed them in an atmosphere that enables judges to give valuable evidence without feeling that their position is compromised in any way.

Peter Luff: He is lucky. Mine does not. I speak as a simple Back Bencher. I see on the Order Paper today, however, that our Committee has been re-nominated and I hope that it will get going again very quickly. I want to put on record my gratitude to the Chief Whip, but I hope that we shall not see a repeat of the unfortunate circumstances that arose at the end of last Session.
	The Government have spoken of the need for an increased role for Select Committees. The Lord High Chancellor, to give him his proper title, spoke briefly about that during his speech today. I would have liked to have asked him what he meant by an increased role, as I have seen only rather limited proposals for confirmatory hearings, which have their limitations. In a way, Select Committees have that power anyway. We certainly enjoyed our de facto confirmatory hearing with Lord Jones of Birmingham when he appeared before us in his role as the new trade Minister. I am not sure whether he enjoyed it quite so much, but we certainly had a good time. There also seem to be proposals for increased debates on Select Committee reports, which would be good. All too often, such reports are written and then simply gather dust. However, Select Committees already have power to revisit reports and to reopen inquiries if they are dissatisfied with the progress that is being made, so I shall be interested to see exactly what the increased powers for Select Committees will involve.
	The Government appear to be saying a great deal about improving scrutiny, and I welcome that. One innovation to which I am particularly looking forward is the new provision for topical debates at the end of Question Time. That could be quite a challenge to Secretaries of State, who will be expected to lead those sections of Question Time. That will be good. I am puzzled, however, by the draft legislative programme. I had not realised, until the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed told me, that an item had been quickly and peremptorily dropped from it, and I agree with him about the importance of the coroners Bill. I do not think that we need a draft programme, however. Instead, the Government should be putting their energies into draft Bills. That is what really helps better scrutiny in this place.
	I want to refer to about seven different Bills, but I will try to be brief; the House should not worry, they will not all get the exploration that I would like to give them. So far as I can tell, only one of those Bills exists in draft, which is unfortunate. The Government need to think again about whether pre-empting the Queen's Speech in July actually serves any useful purpose. Certainly it was too late for the old Trade and Industry Committee to examine the Bills proposed in the draft legislative programme, because we just could not organise a meeting in time following the very late announcement. Some of the Bills from the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform are very welcome, but I do not see the point of the preliminary announcement.
	My main subjects today are not confined to the Home Office or, indeed, to the Ministry of Justice. I apologise to Ministers, but I intend to use the latitude of the second day of the Queen's Speech debate to range more widely over issues relevant to tomorrow's debate on local government, next Tuesday's debate on education and Wednesday's on the economy. As the hon. Member for Cleethorpes suggested, many issues need a more holistic approach. I hesitate to use that word and I am struggling for a better one, but joined-up is equally a clich [Interruption.] Yes, a broad approach; I am grateful for that suggestion. I refer to issues that cannot easily be pigeon-holed into individual days of debate or departmental responsibilities. Competitiveness, skills, climate change, security and energy supplythese are issues in respect of which many Departments have a role to play.
	I suppose that my overarching concernI noticed it in this Queen's Speech as I have in previous onesis that the Government seem to be addicted to legislation, regulation and interference rather than just effective administration. Why cannot Government Departments, Government organisations, public services and local authorities be left to get on with the job and do things better rather than this constant shuffling of the pack? I am thinking of what will be the Trade and Industry Committee's last ever publication, which comes out tomorrow. It deals with public procurement. There are some very important recommendations in that report, but as far as I can tell none requires new legislation to make them work. I suggest one motto for the Government: Doing less better, which would be a good idea.
	Let me deal with issues that specifically concern the Home Office and, to some extent, the Department for Work and Pensions. I am thinking of the scandal over recent immigration statistics. We do not need a criminal justice or immigration Bill to deal with the problem; rather, we should let Departments do their jobs better. One of our recent Select Committee reportsEurope moves Eastdrew attention to the woeful inadequacies in immigration statistics and suggested mechanisms available to the Government to provide better and more accurate estimates. It does not require legislation to improve the position; it requires the Government to get on with the job of running government more effectively.
	I had intended to quote the Select Committee report at length, but I will not do so. I hope that the Government will respond thoughtfully to our suggestions for better statistics, which are really important not just for public services but for the whole future of the UK economy's competitiveness. We need to know with greater certainty how many immigrants are over here and we need to know their long-term intentions. How many of them will remain here and how many will go back to their home countries, taking with them the skills and good will for this country that they fostered while they were here?
	I would like the Home Office to think very carefully about one particular issue in the report. There is evidence that central and east European migrant workers who come here to work in the agricultural sector rapidly move on to higher skill jobs elsewhere or to other jobs that they find more congenial. The agricultural sector, and particularly the horticultural sector, is thus short of people to pick and pack produce, which has potentially serious consequences for the availability of British food.
	On Saturday, I talked to a farmer who is cutting his strawberry crop by half because he does not believe that he can find the workers to pick his strawberries. He is going back to arable farming over large areas of his land. At precisely the time when British consumers are demanding more products, that is a very unwelcome development indeed. I hope that the Government will think again with the utmost care about the abolition of the seasonal agricultural workers scheme. We still need Ukrainians, Russians, Bulgarians and Romanians on those tightly monitored and well organised schemes to ensure that we have the people in place to provide British consumers with the British food that they want to eat. Again, however, that does not need new legislation; we just need to use existing legislation better. Indeed, perhaps ironically for a Conservative, I think that it is better not to scrap a piece of legislation that is already on the statute book.
	Another example of where further legislation is unnecessary relates to education. We are getting an education Bill, but it will not sort out the most pressing education issue facing my constituents. I have given notice to the two other Members concerned that I would be raising this matter. I am pleased to see one of them in the Chamber, but I appreciate that as a Whip he is not able to respond to the comments that I am about to make. Worcestershire's rotten funding deal is what disadvantages our children and our schools. We need to close the gap between ours and the better funded authoritiesa gap that has grown in both absolute and relative terms over the past 10 years.
	I observe in passing how great it is to have the time to debate the Queen's Speech, but what a shame that we are not debating the comprehensive spending review or the pre-Budget report. In The Governance of Britain, the Government said that debates on those statements were literally automatic and should be an important part of this House's scrutiny of the Executive. We seem to be denied the chance of a debate on those issues this time round, however, so the Queen's Speech is the next best vehicle.
	I am disappointed that the current Home Secretarya Worcestershire Member of Parliamentwho will be replying to the debate, was not able to address the unfair funding gap for Worcestershire when she was a Schools Minister. I am even more disappointed that she chooses to attack the local education authority for the cuts that it is obliged to make to local services as a result of the unfair funding deal that she was not able to address. The hon. Member for Worcester (Mr. Foster) is shaking his head. He and I had quite a strong exchange recently about the issue of school balances. It is utterly outrageous that the Government ever planned to tax schools for making prudent provision for future financial years. Of course excess balances need to be treated with considerable concern, and reduced where possible. Many schools in Worcestershire, however, must save up across the end of a financial year for things that other schools, in other parts of the country, take for granted.
	The idea that schools would lose money automatically for making prudent provision was an outrage. I was disappointed that the hon. Gentleman originally supported that policy. I am glad that the Government had a change of heart, and I hope that he now admits that the policy was wrong. I disagree with his comment that the county council is awash with cash. We do not need new legislation in the Queen's Speech to address the huge financial problems that the county council faces in finding 25 million in savings. The Government have the power to put that right now, but instead Ministers and Government Members prefer to attack local people, head teachers, governors and councillors for their attempts to deal with the unfair situation.
	That leads me to another future concern. We do not need a health and social care Bill to address the looming crisis in Worcestershire and around the country of the growing number of elderly, mentally impaired patients suffering from dementia and a range of other diseases of old age. The Government have given the NHS a 4 per cent. increase this year and have given local authorities less than 1 per cent. Let us guess whom they will blame when local councils have to make cuts that the NHS does not have to make, and when those elderly people pay the price. They are setting councils up to fail, and they will blame councils. The blame, however, lies with the Government. We need not a health and social care Bill but a better balance between the different parts of the care system. It is one of my overall themes that many of the problems that we face need not new Bills but a new Government.
	The other main theme of my speech is that we are at the 11th hour on a number of issues. Time is running out on many issues of concern to my Committee, which I hope will be the Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Committee in a few days' time. Such issues include: a skilled work force for the future; a secure energy supply; and a competitive, flexible Europe. Those issues are addressed by Bills in the Queen's Speech, but given that the question of liberty has so rightly dominated this afternoon's debate, the Government are approaching too many of those problems with unacceptable authoritarianism, burdened with a legacy of complacency.
	I shall be briefer on the following subjects than I had hoped, as they are not strictly relevant to today's debate, but let us take the example of the energy Bill. I will probably support that Bill in the Lobby, subject to its precise detail. How could any Conservative oppose a measure to cut carbon emissions, secure the best energy mix for the UK, encourage the private sector to fund, construct and operate new nuclear plants, assist private sector investment in gas supply projects and create a framework for private sector cash to be channelled into carbon capture and storage projects? What worries me, however, is that the Government have come to the subject so late. A legacy of complacency makes the Bill desperately overdue.
	The current energy review flows from a missed opportunitythe 2003 energy White Paper. The writing was on the wall then, but the Government chose to ignore it. A realisation of the serious future energy gap that we face has kick-started the new energy review process, which has been under way for two years. Three consultations on nuclear power have taken place, but still no formal decision has been taken on whether to give the go-ahead. The public's perception, I am afraid, is that it is just a rubber-stamping exercise, and that is not helped by the fact that the nuclear installations inspectorate has already begun a public consultation on potential reactor designs, before the Government's announcement.
	The Government should, say, two years ago, have made a more honest, rapid and prudent declaration that they wanted new nuclear power stations and pressed ahead then with the measures necessary to deliver them: persuading the public of the need; dealing with the nuclear waste legacy; and above all, creating a stable price for carbon. The Government still express confidence in the EU emissions trading scheme, and I hope that they are right. I am glad that they have reserved the option of taking additional powers should that scheme not deliver the price for carbon, but it is crucial not just for nuclear but for renewable energy.
	The only area in which there seems to be progress is planning. I am delighted that the Government are trying to deal with that issue, but I worry that they may not be getting the methodology quite right. I am particularly worried about the fact that they are paying no attention to renewable heat and not enough attention to combined heat and power; but those are subjects for another debate.
	Some people say that we need to be, in John Howard's memorable phrase, alert but not alarmed about future energy supplies, but I am becoming a bit alarmed. More than 30 per cent. of our supply will shut down over the next 20 years, and all our nuclear power stations except Sizewell B, as well as many older coal-fired stations, are due to be closed. There is a real sense of a lost opportunity. This energy Bill should have been in the Queen's Speech two or three years ago, and I am sorry that it is so late.
	I had to laugh recently when I read Energy Markets Outlook, published by the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. The Minister for Energy, the hon. Member for Croydon, North (Malcolm Wicks), commented that the report suggested the existence of
	significant medium-term opportunities for the construction of new electricity generation capacity in response to expected demand and forthcoming plant closures.[ Official Report, 23 October 2007; Vol. 465, c. 5WS.]
	Of course there are significant medium-term opportunities, but we are in a panic: we need that generating capacity really quickly.
	Let me return briefly to the planning issue. I hope that the planning Bill strikes the right balance between local accountability and national need, but I am nervous about the creation of the new commission. I think that there are other methods of ensuring the necessary clarity and enabling public inquiries to take place in a much shorter time. I hope that this Bill is the right one, but I am very apprehensive about it: I fear that it will take a sledgehammer to crack a nut, destroying local accountability in the process.
	The hon. Member for Cleethorpes raised another issue that is directly relevant to the debate. The education and skills Bill is potentially very important because, as she said, there is a strong correlation between criminality and low levels of educational attainment. Ask any magistrate, and he or she will say that that is true.
	Skills shortages in the UK work force are now chronic. Only about half our population have the equivalent of national vocational qualifications at level 3 or higher, and 31 or 32 per cent. have qualifications at level 1 or lower. Those are not the qualifications that the modern economy needs; it requires qualifications at level 3 or higher. One in four maths teachers are not specialists, but they are teaching maths because of shortages. The number of A-level physics students has declined by 38 per cent. over the last 17 years, while 26 per cent. of state secondary schools have no physics specialist and 12 per cent. have no chemistry specialist. One in six British adults does not have the literacy skills expected of an 11-year-old, and 50 per cent. of those people do not have that level of functional numeracy.
	I am wearing my pass around my neck in order to demonstrate that the literacy skills problem may even extend to the Serjeant at Arms Department. I hope that when our passes are next reissued the word It's in item 2, relating to unauthorised possession of the pass, will lose its apostrophe.

Phil Wilson: It is a pleasure to have an opportunity to speak on this aspect of the Gracious Speech.
	I made my maiden speech on Second Reading of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill, and I am now a member of the Committee on it. I have listened intently to the debates in Committee and, as a newcomer to the House, I have been bemused by the position that Opposition Members have taken on certain aspects of the Bill.
	First, I shall address what has been important about this Government's approach to criminal justice, and especially antisocial behaviour. The Government have a long and proud record on tackling those issues and can boast that they are firmly on the side of the victim and want there to be strong communities that can live in harmony without the fear of crime stalking the streets. They have gone some way towards achieving that. Since 1997, overall crime has fallen by a third. Car crime and burglary rates have more than halved. Adult reoffending rates have fallen. There have also been reductions in people's fear of crime and perceptions of antisocial behaviour.
	Neighbourhood policing has a key role to play in building confidence in the fight against crime in local areas. That is why every community will by April next year have a neighbourhood policing team working with local people to focus on the crime issues that matter to them. I have seen that for myself in the village of West Cornforth in my constituency. I was recently involved in a neighbourhood policing exercise in that village. Agencies were working together to clamp down on antisocial behaviour blackspots and looking out for signal crimes such as graffiti that they could tackle at an early stage before things got out of hand. The youth project there has also helped to give responsibility to young people, and given them ownership of how they organise and run the project.
	As a consequence of neighbourhood policing, proactive local agencies and a community not scared to face challenges, antisocial behaviour has fallen significantly in the area. In Sedgefield, crime is more that 20 per cent. below the national average. Neighbourhood policing is helping to secure that. In West Cornforth, a balance has been struck between providing something for young people to do through the community youth drop-in centre while, at the same time, policing in a firm but neighbourly way.
	There is still more to do, however. That is why I am pleased to be involved in the Committee stage of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill. Its provisions will help tackle crime on the estates where I grew up in Sedgefield, and elsewhere. Violent offender orders will allow courts to impose post-sentence restrictions on those convicted of violent offences. The Bill will extend the existing crack house powers to tackle premises at the centre of serious and persistent disorder or nuisance, regardless of tenure. There will be new powers to deal with nuisance or disturbance on NHS premises. The creation of youth rehabilitation orders will provide community sentences for children and young offenders. These provisions will, once again, place the Government on the side of the victim and the community. However, our approach to ridding our communities of crime needs to be holistic and to offer a balanceas shown in West Cornforthbetween punishing the criminal and providing potential offenders with the opportunity of not offending, stopping them in their tracks, especially when they are young, turning them around and setting them on a different course.
	We all hear in our constituencies of young people who might be causing problems on estates, standing on street corners being a nuisance. We hear of young people on the streets, in back alleys and elsewhere, drinking illegally. However, this is not an issue for public houses; rather, it must be addressed by shopkeepers and supermarkets, where it is perhaps possible to buy 20 cans of beer for 10. On occasion, young people get somebody aged over 18 to go into a supermarket to buy 10-worth of beer, so that they can drink it outside.

Patrick Mercer: It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson). I am sure that all the emotions that he has expressed could be reflected by all of us in our constituencies, but perhaps in slightly different ways.
	I want to talk exclusively about the Government's proposals to increase the maximum period that terrorist suspects can be held from 28 days to 56 days or beyond. May I start by asking the Minister exactly what has changed since we went through this difficult, painful and unnecessary process 18 months or two years or so ago, when the Government, apparently supported by elements of the police force and the security services, were saying that we needed to hold terrorist suspects for 90 days, rather than for the 56 days that is now being discussed? Has the threat changed? Has it diminished? Are we likely to be investigating less complex cases in future? I do not think so. When I listen to the head of MI5, the Home Secretary or the Government generally, or to my rhetoric, it is clear to me that the threat is just as complex. It is thus hard to understand why the Government can reject accusations that this is a political issue rather than one that is bent upon the protection of this country.
	The issues of plea bargaining, post-charge questioning, and the use of holding charges and intercept evidence have arisen. I declare an interest, because I have been involved in all of those activities practically in fighting the IRA, albeit a few years ago. I understand all of these matters and have employed them. But none of them is particularly significant. I respect the words of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) about the use of intercept evidence, but if one talks to practitioners about any of those measures, they will say that they are certainly useful, but they are not a silver bullet that can put terrorists away without further reference. If such evidence becomes suddenly admissible in court, it will not mean that charges and accusations can be cleared up with the snap of the fingers. They are useful tools, but they are not the pre-eminently important issue with which we are dealing.
	I therefore ask the House not to be distracted. Whatever the Government sayI am totally on side in trying to reach some consensus on this difficult subjectabout post-charge questioning and the like, they are but placebos when compared with the main issue of the extension from 28 days to 56 or beyond.
	I have been involved at the sharp end of a similar sort of problem and I have railed against the windbags, the bureaucrats and the politiciansthose who do not daily face criminals and terrorists or deal with the problems that arise from their activities. It is hard for police officers and members of the security services to understand why a bunch of card-carrying civilians do not say, Yes, you can have whatever powers you need. If you say you need them, we will grant them, because the one enduring liberty that stands above everything else is the ability to live in peace and without threat. It is therefore hard to understand why Parliament stands in the way of granting those powers.
	I can sympathise, and even empathise, with the stand that many in the police are taking. I respect the fact that the Government have advanced some sensible solutions for judicial review for those being held without charge every seven days, and other forms of review, including debate in Parliament, of those being held for longer periods. That is sensible, liberal and laudable. Any of those solutions should work, but if we look at the lessons of history, we will see that they will not work.
	Whatever we do and whatever we say, if we extend the period of detention before charge, our enemieswrongly, in my viewwill label it internment. Would it be internment? Would it bear any resemblance to what went on during the war years, when Italians and Germans were held? Would it bear any resemblance to what I saw in the 1970s in Northern Ireland, when it was predominantly Catholics who were held? Of course not. It bears no resemblance whatever. But would that stop our enemies claiming that it was internment? Absolutely not.
	If we hand that weapon to Islamist fundamentalists, those who would damage this state not just physically, but morally and politically, we would do ourselves a grave disservice. We would immediately lay ourselves open to further alienating the community from which the majorityalthough not allof the problem stems. It is crucially important that the British Muslim community is kept on side in its entiretyor as close to its entirety as we can get. If we consider what happened in the 1970s in Northern Ireland, we see that the one word internment wouldI believe, having listened to the evidence given to the Home Affairs Committeealienate good, honest, loyal, properly religious and truthful Muslims.
	Secondly, and probably even more damagingly, anything we do to damage the flow of intelligence from the relevant communities will turn off our only important weapon in fighting the people whom I am talking about. We can rely on information, observation and analysis, but none of that equates to proper, hard intelligence. Believe me, anything that we do that damages our touts, informers or resources, or that alienates people who are giving information, will damage the fight against terror.
	My next point harks back to what I saw being done in Northern Ireland. The more we take technically innocent people and allow them to be locked up for up to, let us say, 55 days before being released without charge, the more opportunities we will give our enemies to contort the truth, exercise black propaganda against us and twist facts. There is plenty of precedent for that sort of thing; some would say that a number of incidents from the past two years already fall into that category. Once such things happen, those individuals who have been held without charge for that lengthy period will become recruiting magnets for Islamist fundamentalists and totems for radicalisation, just as the IRA used its ex-internees for such purposes in the 1970s in Northern Ireland.
	My message is simple. I understand why we want to do such things. I understand any policeman or security service person who says that he or she needs such powers, and I empathise with them. However, we must learn the lessons of history. Once we are labelled yet again as a nation that intends to intern its people and as an illiberal tyrannical society and not a democracy, the terrorists whom we are trying to defeat will have dented usand dented us badly.

Kevan Jones: I support the Gracious Speech. Like the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Peter Luff), I shall touch on a number of constituency issues. The first is the welcome inclusion in the speech of the commitment to affordable housing.
	I have described my constituency as a rural one with urban problems. It covers a rural area with two medium-sized towns and a number of former mining communities. Since the late 1990s, there has been a problem in those former mining communities: it has been difficult for young people to get on the property ladder, given the restricted social housing. If people want to stay in those villages, as many do, there is a real problem, as they can no longer afford to do so.
	Although I welcome the commitment on affordable housing, I question whetherand I shall return to this theme in another contextthe answer is to set up something called the homes and communities agency. My heart sinks when the Government announce another initiative whose answer to a problem is to set up an agency to sort it out. As one proud to have been a local councillor for 12 years, I think that we need to give more powers back to local government to tackle affordable housing. We do not need to try to reinvent the wheel by setting up an agency that will try to sort out all the problems.
	I have been critical of some local government in Durham and I continue to be so when it does things wrong. However, it is accountable to local people and, if new local housing is to be built, councils should be the vehicle not only for providing that directly but for doing so in partnership with housing associations and the voluntary sector. There are some good examples of where that can be done. I would rather it were spearheaded by local councils, along with local Members of Parliament, than yet another agency be set up, which, if it is anything like what we have had so far as regards a Whitehall-centred view of the world, will take little interest in what local people want. Moreover, local councils are democratically accountable, whereas another agency will not be. Nevertheless, the commitment to affordable housing is very welcome.
	I also get a sense of foreboding from the idea that the new settlements are going to be called eco-towns. I am not a signed-up member of the anti-eco tendency, but I wonder whether that is just another label that will be slapped on a poorly designed initiative that will get all the money rather than that money being directed into former mining housing in my villages, for example, and into local councils where it will do the most good. I am not sure that many of my constituents are bothered about what type of house they live in, or what it is called, as long as they have one. A better way forward might be to invest money to things such as home insulation for existing housing stock.
	Another welcome aspect of the Gracious Speech is the commitment to education. My constituency has some obvious social problems. South Stanley is in the top 20 most deprived wards in the country. Despite that, the local secondary school, led by a dynamic head teacher, Janet Bridges, is doing fantastic work not only in raising A to C grades to over 50 per cent. but in tackling the issue of pupils aged 14 or 15 who suddenly want to drop out of the education system. I would be completely opposed to trying to tie them into education until the age of 18 if it was just about trying to put them through the mill of examinations. The proposals are welcome because they will allow those people to stay in education and training, not suddenly drop out of the system as is happening now. I ask Ministers who will be piloting this piece of legislation to come to Stanley school of technology and look at the work that Janet Bridges is doing in trying to keep some very difficult cases in the education system. It may not be the system that we all recognise, based on trying to get exams, but it is about ensuring that people leave school with some basic life skills. That is important. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) said, in constituencies such as mine the problems of crime and antisocial behaviour involve exactly the kinds of children who are dropping out of the education system and cannot see that they have a place in the world. I am a big believer in the idea that people need what I call a place in the world. The first thing that most people ask when they meet someone is, What do you do for a living? That is difficult for a person who does not have a job or has no hope of getting a job or meaningful training. The commitment has to be seen as a great opportunity for communities such as mine.
	Alongside that, we should be trying to raise aspirations. Stanley has one of the lowest education staying-on rates anywhere in the north-east. I do not accept that its pupils are in some way less intelligent than those in other parts of the north-eastwe just need to ensure that they, and their parents, are given opportunities and aspirations to stay on until university and go further. That is why I am pleased that Durham county council's latest proposals for academies look to bring sixth-form education back to Stanley, which is long overdue.
	I turn now to the proposals on the NHS. Two weekends ago,  The Sunday Telegraph carried a four-page spread about how bad the service is. It spoke about how terrible it is that long waiting lists mean that people have to travel as far as India to get operations. Interestingly, most of the people mentioned lived in the south-east of England.
	I was elected in 2001, and the disgrace then was that waiting times for orthopaedic operations at my local hospitalwhich used to be the local workhousewere in excess of two years. Because mine is a former mining area, a lot of people need such operations, but there will no waiting lists at all for them later this year.
	In my constituency, we have a fantastic new community hospital and a general hospital that cost 97 million. Last week, I met representatives of the local primary care trust, which has earmarked money for the new Stanley health centrethe fifth new GP or NHS facility in North Durham in recent years. That is a fantastic achievement, but the Government need to concentrate on the good things that have been done, and to tackle the bad management that can still be found in some parts of the NHS.
	With the greatest respect to Ministers, I do not believe that we need the proposed care quality commission. That would be yet another quango, and what would it do? In my previous life as a councillor, I found that local councils were very good at doing such things as improving the care offered in residential care homes. Local environmental health departments looked after matters such as the quality of food and health and safety in such homes. In my capacity as chairman of the environmental health committee in my area, I more than once had to sign documents to close down residential care homes, but I am not sure that anything will be gained from having yet another commission.
	Moreover, if the Government really want to empower local people and local government, they should give them more responsibility. Local people can scrutinise local NHS services and hold the relevant bodies to account. As an electorate, they also have what no commission or quango ever hasthat is, the power to hang a sword of Damocles over the heads of the people charged with running services. If those people do something wrong, they will get voted out.
	Although I believe that local government should have a larger role in the NHS, we should also celebrate what has already been achieved. We in North Durham and the other Durham constituencies can be very proud of our record in that record.
	I also welcome the local transport Bill proposed in the Gracious Speech. For once, I believe that the Government have listened to calls from me and others to give more responsibility to local councils. People in my constituency rely on bus transport, but two companiesArriva and Go North Easthave monopolised that provision in the north-east of England. Those companies are able to remove routes that they consider to be unprofitable, or to ask for subsidies from the county council to run a service.
	For people without a car who live in a village such as Quaking Houses in my constituency, access to a bus is a necessity, not a luxury. I recognise that mass employment is not going to return to North Durhamthose days are long gonebut we do need good transport links to jobs along the A1 corridor, on Tyneside or down in Teesside. Since deregulation, however, bus companies have been able to cut routes willy-nilly, and I welcome the proposals in the local transport Bill to give councils more control over such matters.
	I must mention the Go North East bus company, if for no other reason than to annoy it. It has continually taken routes away and left communities high and dry. Peter Huntley, its new managing director, seems to be quite an honest individual in many ways. When he was accused at a public meeting of not caring about the performance of bus services, he replied that his responsibility was to his shareholders. Some companies are interested only in profit rather than in social needs.
	Mr. Huntley wrote to me in the summer asking to meet me, apparently because I had single-handedly upset his company's profitability. I replied, No problem, but about two days before the meeting I was sent a briefing note that I was clearly not supposed to see. It claimed that my continued criticisms and my standing up for my constituents were severely damaging the business and set out how the company was going to sort things out. I wrote back pointing out that if I was seen as the problem there was not much point in meeting. I hope that the proposed Bill gives councils the right to take on operators such as Go North East and deal with them.
	Another issue in the Queen's Speech was youth provision, which will be welcome news to one of my constituents who raised the matter with me during one of my street surgeries a few weeks ago. It was also mentioned today by my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield and is important in some of the small communities and villages in my constituency where there is no leisure provision except the local youth centre or the village hall, so I welcome the proposal to claim dormant bank accounts and direct the money to youth facilities, such as Chester-le-Street youth centre, which does fantastic work but needs investment. The early assignment of such funding is important.
	The proposed employment Bill will tighten the minimum wage regulations and deal with employers who flout them. When the minimum wage was introduced, the Conservatives were all doom and gloom and said that it would lead to more unemployment. In the north-east, 111,000 people are better off owing to that legislation and nearly 60 per cent. of them are women, so anything that can be done to bear down on what I admit is a minority of rogue employers who are still trying to flout the rules will be welcome.
	I welcome the proposals on flexible working. We live in increasingly difficult times when both parents work and people have to look after aged relatives and children, so I welcome the fact that the Government are taking flexible working seriously. If it is done properly it can lead to better productivity, as more enlightened employers are aware. I used to be a full-time GMB official and many years ago the Littlewoods organisation's extremely flexible approach to care and facilities for its largely female work force improved productivity.
	It is all right for the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) to claim that those proposals are one of his great ideas, but we need to keep reminding people, and reinforcing the argument, that when the Conservatives had the chance to vote for proposals on paternity leave, they voted against them. We need to remind people of the fact that the Conservatives voted against measures such as the minimum wage, which has given an economic boost to many families in my constituency. We need no lessons from the Conservatives about decent employment rights.
	Immigration is a topical issue. I think it is a good thing for the UK. Over the past few years, immigration from the aspirant countries of eastern Europe has led to more employment and has filled labour gapseven in the north-east we could not get people to fill certain jobs. The proposed points system is the correct approach in looking at the skills we actually need. The right hon. Member for Witney says that we need to have a grown-up debate about immigration. We do, and we need to recognise that whether we like it or not we are a nation that has been built on immigrationfrom 1066 onwards. It is the Victorianised view of Britishness that skews that argument. In most communities, immigration has not only led to economic benefits, but enriched the culture.
	People discuss Polish immigration to this country as though it were something new. When I was growing up in the South Yorkshire coalfield, I went to school with many children who had Polish-sounding names. After the second world war, when the communists took over in Poland, many Polish people stayed and worked in the coal mines of South Yorkshire, where they integrated well. It is important to recognise that Polish immigration is not new and that it can add to the economic good of this country, rather than detract from it.

Kevan Jones: I did not know that, but local communities across this country provide similar examples. In the north-east of England, for example, there was mass immigration from Ireland in the 19th century to build roads and railways, and Ireland also provided a lot of the labour for the Durham coalfields and the Tyne shipyards. If we are to have a grown-up debate, we must recognise that history.
	There is an onus on people who say that we have had enough immigration and that it should stop to say what the number should be. Any artificial cap would be a mistake. For example, students studying in this country provide positive benefits not only by bringing cash to Durham university and other universities in the north-east, but by allowing people to understand the culture of the UKin many cases, people who have studied here are great ambassadors for the UK when they return to their countries. If we are going to have the debate, we should put it in its proper historical perspective, and people who want to talk about numbers need to say what the numbers should be.
	I want to discuss two issues that were omitted from the Queen's Speech. When the hon. Member for North-West Norfolk (Mr. Bellingham) raised the issue of a coroners Bill, I was not pleased by the Lord Chancellor's response. The Lord Chancellor implied that only the hon. Member for North-West Norfolk wants such a Bill, but many Labour Members want to see its introduction. The Bill exists in draft form, and it is long overdue, because we need to bring up to date the archaic coroner system in this country. The draft Bill followed an excellent report by the Constitutional Affairs Committee, which we debated earlier this year in Westminster Hall. The Bill would provide an opportunity not only to bring the coroner service up to date, but to tackle some issues that affect our constituents.
	I chair the all-party group on cardiac risk in the young, and the charity Cardiac Risk in the Young is anxious to see the introduction of the coroners Bill. One issue is the need to introduce a system to ensure that when young people suddenly die of cardiac failure it is properly investigated and the statistics, which can influence the debate, are kept. At the moment, the problem is that the sudden deaths of young people are investigated differently in different jurisdictions. Such cases are, for example, sometimes put down to drowning. In areas in which coroners are proactive, there is not only support for families, but the death is registered as a cardiac death. That is important because CRY estimates that eight young people a week die of sudden cardiac failure, and only a coroner system where such information can be held centrally will allow us to argue the necessary case for screening in the health service for young people who do sports. I hope that there is time during the Session to introduce a coroners Bill because I and many others would welcome it.
	Finally, I was a little concerned that there was nothing in the Queen's Speech about our covenant with the armed forces. There has been a lot of talk about the way in which we treat the men and women who serve in the forces, and their families. The Government have a good track record on delivery in this area, but we need a grown-up debate on the covenanta point that the Royal British Legion and others have raised. A Bill or even a White Paper that addressed the matter would have been welcome.
	We need to consider what the Government should do and what charities should do. If people join the armed forces, we need to think about what they should expect from the Government if they are serving abroad, or the minimum standards for things such as housing. It appals me, having been involved in the report of the Select Committee on Defence into armed forces housing, that the Ministry of Defence can say that it is satisfactory when an emergency repair takes two days. If someone in local government had tried to claim that, they would have been shot. An emergency repair should be done within hours.
	We need that debate and we must focus on what should be provided for servicemen and women, and their families. It is not just a political problem. Senior generals have turned a blind eye to the matter and concentrated a lot on equipment and warfighting. They have not considered the support we should give to members of the armed forces and our families. The matter is put into clear perspective when people are severely injured or dying abroad.
	With those remarks, I welcome the proposals in the Gracious Speech. It adds to 10 years of massive improvement in a host of areas throughout the country. In my constituency of North Durham, things are not perfect, but they are very much better than when I was elected in 2001.

Jacqui Smith: I am not under the misapprehension that everybody agrees on that issue. I have already quoted senior police officers who believe that there is now a case to consider going beyond 28 days. Rightly, that will be the subject of further discussion, and we will introduce those proposalsI hope having reached a consensuswhen we introduced the Bill.
	Turning to immigration, we have heard some sensible and measured contributions, which is clear evidence that this House can approach such sensitive issues without recourse to unconsidered rhetoric. My hon. Friend the Member for North Durham was right when he discussed the need for a grown-up debate. I am therefore pleased that the Conservative party has taken on that issue in recent days by disciplining parliamentary candidates and ridding itself of anything that might smack of racism. I wonder what action it will take on the report in  The Independent yesterday about the inflammatory Conservative leaflet now circulating in Dudley. In a passage about so-called asylum seekers, it states:
	If you go abroad on holiday, check your suitcases before you come back!
	Lurid language is being used to whip up fears about immigration. Such language is as shrill as a dog whistle, and in my view it has no place in responsible political debate about the serious issues that we face on immigration and asylum.
	As the House knows, asylum applications are now at their lowest since 1993. We will rightly continue to provide a haven for those in genuine need, and we will also continue to ensure that speedy decisions are taken. We are resolving cases more quickly than ever before. In 1997, it took almost two years just to make an initial asylum decision. Now, the majority of new cases are given an initial decision within two months, and 40 per cent. of cases are completely resolved in six months.
	Today, some of my hon. Friends raised the issue of the exploitation of migrant labour, and it is crucial that determined enforcement is given the appropriate priority. This morning, I visited Communications house, a local enforcement office in London, where I spoke to staff about how they are cracking down on abuse in the system and targeting rogue employers of migrant labour. Across the country, there have been 3,700 successful operations to tackle illegal working. That vital work would have been slashed by Opposition Members, when they went into the last election calling for the immigration budget to be cut in half. Instead, we have doubled our enforcement effort and have 1,000 additional staff in border control. It is no good their talking tough on immigration, if they are not willing to invest in making it work.
	We are delivering a fair, firm and effective process for determining eligibility, processing applications and clamping down on abuse. We will go further, as we have heard, in making sweeping changes to Britain's migration system. From early next year, the points-based system will help us to do that, and we will work closely with the migration advisory committee and the migration impacts forum to give us the balanced analysis we need on the skills gaps we have to fill and the impact of immigration on our public services.
	From next year, the biometric identity card for foreign nationals working in the UK will be equally vital to the protections we are putting in place. Conservative Members like to think they talk tough on immigration, on crime, and on counter-terrorism, but they want to scrap the ID card scheme that is fundamental to helping to control immigration and to protect our citizens. A little over a month ago, they published figures saying that they will cut the costs for ID cards for foreign nationals as well. They claim that they will spend the savings on prison places, a border police force, and drug rehab. Unfortunately, if one looks at their figures, it becomes clear that they cannot get anywhere near the money that they would need for these commitments. They will not save anything like 250 million from scrapping ID cards, as they claim. Even if they could, it would cost that much to fund just the prison places that they say they want to build, never mind the port security and drug rehab plans that they have announced.
	The fact is that there is a black hole of at least 150 million in the Conservatives' plans, and, even worse, there will be a black hole in this country's security and the protection of our citizens if they have their way. But they need to do more than tighten up their figures if they want to be taken seriously. They need to get their story straight. Do they support the biometric ID card scheme for foreign nationals that we are introducing next year, or do they not? If they do, why are they planning to cut 40 million of set-up costs for the scheme? Until they can tell us unequivocally that they back ID cards for foreign nationals, their position is nearly as ludicrousnearly, but not quiteas that of the Liberal Democrats.
	The hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Clegg) has spoken proudly of how he will break laws passed by this House on the national identity scheme. [Hon. Members: Where is he?] Apparently, he is off campaigning this evening. I genuinely wish him well, but I have to say that threatening laws passed by this House is no way to be taken seriously, either as a shadow Home Secretary or a future party leader.
	In contrast to the muddle, uncertainty and opportunism that these days passes for the policy of the Opposition, the Gracious Speech sets outs provisions to deliver stability, security and opportunity for this country. On this side of the House, we are committed to meeting the needs and aspirations of all our citizens, through measures that will make direct improvements to their daily lives with regard to housing, education, health care, employment and the environment. Provisions on counter-terrorism, immigration, citizenship and crime form an important part of the Gracious Speech. They offer critical underpinning and protection for our citizens and the freedoms that they enjoy as they go about their daily lives, and I commend them to the House.
	Debate adjourned.  [Tony Cunningham.]
	 Debate to be resumed tomorrow.

Peter Lilley: I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to Mr. Speaker for allowing me to have a debate on the fraudulent transfer of land titles of people's houses.
	Before I uttered a word, the debate has illustrated two important points. First, it shows the power of Parliament to hold the Government to account. Merely by putting down the debate on the Order Paper, you, Madam Deputy Speaker, have persuaded or provoked the Government to take action, which they previously seemed reluctant to do, to attempt to prevent the sort of fraud to which I want to draw the House's attention. Secondly, the debate demonstrates constituents' power, through their Members of Parliament, to influence Government.
	I first encountered the sort of fraud that we are considering when a constituent came to my surgery and told me that he had let a property to another gentleman, who immediately downloaded the deeds of the house and copied the owner's signature from the deeds on to a power of attorney, which purported to give the tenant the right to transfer properties on behalf of the real owner. The first transfer that he undertook was that of the ownership of the property that he was renting into his name. Having duly registered that transfer with the Land Registry, he went to a mortgage provider, took out a mortgage for 140,000 and, two days later, left the property.
	My constituent only discovered some time later that the fraud had been perpetrated, when the mortgage company, finding that its mortgage was in default, had sent in the bailiffs who tried to repossess the property. The new tenant had warned the owner that that had been happening, and then the owner's nightmare began. He had to convince the Land Registry that he was the true owner. To do that, he had to prove that the signature on the power of attorney was not his but a forgery. Having done that, he had to convince the Land Registry that he had properly investigated the tenant's references before letting the property. I do not know why that should be a concern to the Land Registry, but he was able to do that.
	Even when the owner had persuaded the Land Registry that he was the true owner and that the power of attorney and the transfer were fraudulent, it refused to accept liability for a long time or to return to him unencumbered possession of and title to his property. It argued that, because he had not informed it of his change of address, he had in some way contributed to the problems because any letter that it sent to him did not reach him. In addition, when he went to see the police and notified them that the fraud had taken place, they initially refused to investigate, saying that he was not a victim of fraud, that the mortgage company, if anything, was the victim and that they, therefore, would not register it as a crime. Furthermore, they told him that they did not investigate frauds involving only one person and less than 1 million. I am happy to say that, after months of effort, the police began to take the matter seriously and, more important, the Land Registry, perhaps after and because of my intervention, agreed to accept liability for the fraudulent transfer of my constituent's property and to pay off the mortgage and return the deeds unencumbered to him. It has not yet done so, but I am confident that it will.
	It is alarming that the case does not appear to be unique. My constituent discovered that the gentleman who had fraudulently stolen his property and the 140,000 mortgage on it subsequently went to Southampton and perpetrated a similar fraud. He did likewise in Cambridge before being arrested and, unfortunately, released. After he had transferred some of the money into gold, which was sent to Dubai, and transferred other money directly to Pakistan, the fraudster left the country.
	The only solicitor to whom I mentioned the fraud is a friend who happens to be a partner in a leading London firm of solicitors. He immediately said, Oh yes, we're involved in similar cases. After being in business for more than 150 years, the firm has suddenly discovered that the fraudulent transfer of title deeds is an issue. In particular, there is one fraudster who committed a dual fraud. First, he rented property. In this case, he did not use a power of attorney, but he was able to use the utility bills that he received as a resident of the property to help him to establish ownership and residence and fraudulently transfer the property into his name.
	Emboldened by that, the man continued to occupy the property and pay the rent and the mortgage, and tried to perpetrate a similar fraud on the landlord's own home when he discovered that the landlord would be out of the country for a period during the summer. Happily, the first fraud was discovered before the second could be completed, and the hope is that it has been aborted.
	When I asked the Minister what the total number of such frauds was, he said that no record was kept of the total number of attempted or successful frauds, but there have been no fewer than 70 frauds over the past three years where the Land Registry has accepted responsibility and paid out on them. I understand from the excellent You and Yours programme that the total amount paid out on those frauds was of the order of 25 million. We are therefore talking about a serious problem that has a substantial impact on the public purse.
	All those with whom I have discussed the issue, both victims and solicitors, have urged me to make it public. They have done so not primarily because they are concerned about the treatment that they have receivedalthough in some cases they are angry about thatbut because they want to ensure not only that others who discover that they have already been the victim of such fraud do not experience similar treatment from either the Land Registry or the police, but that in future such frauds are prevented altogether and that the public purse should be protected.
	One person said to me, We always talk about an Englishman's home being his castle, but it seems to be possible to wake up and find that it's someone else's property. Another said, We talk about things being as 'safe as houses', but they're only as safe as the title deeds. They have a number of concerns about the issue. They want to ensure, first, that others do not experience such problems. They hope that the Minister will give an assurance that when such frauds are discovered in future, once the ownership is shown to be truly that of the victim they should not be forced to encounter the sort of problems and delays that my constituents experienced.
	Secondly, the people I have spoken to want to be sure that the Government will not spend any more effort denying that the problem of such frauds exists, but instead spend more effort in preventing them from happening in future. Thirdly, those concerned are worried on behalf of the taxpayer, who has had to pay out millions of pounds already, with perhaps more in the pipeline. They do not share the complacency of Ministers, who seem to be saying, What's 25 million, given that the Land Registry has perhaps upwards of 1 billion of revenue over the same period? As a former Treasury Minister brought up in the school of Look after the pence and the pounds will look after themselves, I believe that if Ministers are not prepared to look after the millions, the billions will not look after themselves. Ministers should have acted earlier to stem the loss, not waited until you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and Mr. Speaker put the issue on the Order Paper.
	Fourthly, we want to know why the police are so reluctant to investigate such fraud unless it involves more than 1 million. In the fraud that my solicitor friend's company was dealing with, the total value of the two properties was in the order of 1 million or more. However, because they were in different police districts, the police seemed reluctant to pursue the issue thereto. It sounds as though Government targets or some such factor are distorting sensible policing. If that is not the issue, and the police simply do not have the resources or the ability to pursue such fraud, should it not be referred to the Serious Fraud Office?
	Indeed, one of my constituents has pointed out that, in most cases that we know about, the money has ended up in the middle east or Pakistan. Surely we should be doubly careful to ensure that this kind of fraud will not be used to fund extremist or terrorist movements, even if it has not been so used in the past. That alone should be a reason for the Serious Fraud Office to be involved.
	I mentioned that the scheduling of this debate had provoked the Minister to announce that, as of the beginning of yesterday, it would no longer be possible to download deeds of properties from the Land Registry online. In future, people will have to approach the Land Registry either in person or by post, unless they are registered professional solicitors. We want to be sure that that measure will do the trick. I am afraid that, on its own, in might not be sufficient to do that. Naturally, we hope that it will, but this could be a question of too little, too late.
	The measure will clearly stop signatures being downloaded from the Land Registry and being copied to obtain powers of attorney or used for other purposes connected to this kind of fraud, but it is extraordinary that such a unique personal identifier as a signature was ever made publicly available in this way. Should not the Government investigate whether other documents are available online from which signatures may be obtained, and consider whether those signatures could be redacted out, so as to allow the documents to remain available for public use? I certainly do not want to stop public access to any documents unnecessarily, but it might be sensible to arrange for any signatures to be excluded from them.
	Also, there should be special checks where powers of attorney are used, not least where the beneficiary is the person exercising the power of attorney. The same is true when solicitors cited on a document are not registered with or known to the Land Registry. That was the case with the fraudulent power of attorney that was used to defraud my constituent. The firm of solicitors did not exist, but its name was on the documents and no checks were made. Furthermore, someone has contacted me to ask whether the change that has been made will mean only that the same frauds that have hitherto been perpetrated online will continue to be perpetrated by post.
	I am worried that the Government have been more concerned to defuse the issue by making a change speedily, ahead of this debate, rather than, as I would have hoped, by announcing a proper inquiry into the measures necessary to prevent this kind of fraud and carrying out a proper consultation into the issue. A consultation has been taking place into other aspects of the Land Registry, but it has not focused on frauds of this kind. If a proper investigation were carried out, we could be sure that comprehensive measures would be taken to ensure that the public and professionals still had maximum access, at the lowest cost, to the data necessary to carry out legitimate property transactions, while ensuring that an Englishman's home remained his castle and nobody else's. I am grateful to the Minister for coming to the House to respond to the debate. I hope that he will give me the assurances that I have asked for, and that a proper examination of this problem will be carried out.

Michael Wills: If I may, I will write to the right hon. Gentleman on the question of redaction. He raises an important point about the availability of other official documents online, and the possibility of redacting out signatures.
	This is a complicated issue that also has implications for commerce and trade. The right hon. Gentleman intervened at an appropriate moment, because, as I was saying, a careful balance must be struck between the interests of the property market, which is important to the economy and well-being [Interruption.] The hon. Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis) is making gestures from a sedentary positionpolite gestures, I hope. I will write to the right hon. Gentleman on the issue of redaction of signatures online, in other areas and through the post.
	The right hon. Gentleman raised several specific questions relating to his constituent's case, and the Land Registry has written directly to him on that case, which has now successfully been brought to a conclusion. We all regret that it happened in the first place, and that certain procedures had to be followed that protracted the process of restoring his constituent's position. There are, of course, lessons to be learned from the case, as there are from all such cases. Those are being learned, and we will continue to be extremely vigilant.
	It might be appropriate if I repeated at this point some advice that the Land Registry gives to property owners. Every proprietor of registered land must give the Land Registry at least one address to be entered on the register. That is the address to which the Land Registry will send any communications that it needs to send to the owner. It is important that that address is one at which the owner will receive the communications, and that that address is kept up to date as an address at which such communications can be received. That is crucial in helping to prevent fraud. Owners who so wish can have up to three such addresses on the register, one of which can be an e-mail address.
	As we know, there has been recent public and media concern about the public availability of information from the Land Registry over the internet. Particular concern has been expressed about the availability in that way of copies of mortgages, which have on them the signature of the owner, and in some cases the mortgage account number or amount borrowed. The Ministry of Justice recognised that concern in a statement issued jointly with the Land Registry on 13 August. The public availability of Land Registry information was debated in Parliament as long ago as the late 1980s, and the register has been open since December 1990. The Land Registration Act 2002, which took effect in October 2003, extended the open register by making copies of mortgage deeds and leases available in addition to the register of title itself and other relevant documents. That was the subject of widespread public consultation at the time and was debated extensively in Parliament.
	It is important that the public have a legal right to inspect the register of any title, and any documents that are filed in the Land Registry in relation to any title. There are a number of reasons for that. The open register assists the buying and selling of houses and land and other transactions with land. It assist business and commerce. It enables anyone to find out who owns a piece of land, which can be invaluable in, for example, cases of nuisance or neighbour disputes. It can itself be a safeguard against fraud, because it is transparent: no one can represent themselves as owning a property that is registered to someone else. In many other countries in the European Union and beyond, land registers have been open for much longer than they have been in England and Wales. In fact, an open register is the norm in countries with a land registration system.
	There are a number of ways in which information can be obtained from the Land Registry. For instance, a written application can be made by post or in person at a Land Registry office, and information is available through Land Register Online, which was launched in 2005. The service has proved very popular with the public, and it supports the Government's aim of making public information available electronically. However, owing to concerns that have been expressed about the availability of documents onlineparticularly the fear that it may have the potential to facilitate fraudthe Land Registry conducted a review. As part of that review, it engaged in discussions with the Home Office, the Information Commissioner's Office and the Council of Mortgage Lenders. I hope that, despite what he said in his opening remarks, the right hon. Gentleman now recognises that the process has been continuing for some time.
	The outcome of the review was the Land Registry's decision to remove all documents from the Land Register Online service. The decision was put into effect at midnight on Monday, since when it has not been possible to view documents online in that way. As a result documents will be less readily available, and the Land Registry will have clearer audit trails to people who request the information. The documents will continue to be available through other meansfor example, a written application made by post or in person at a Land Registry officeand will be available to solicitors and other registered business users who use the Land Registry Direct service.
	The right hon. Gentleman asked questions about the police approach to frauds of this kind. As he knows, that is a matter for the Home Office rather than the Ministry of Justice, but I will ensure that my right hon. and hon. Friends at the Home Office are aware of his concerns, and will ask them to respond directly to him.
	As I have said, I will write to the right hon. Gentleman about the signatures, and the redaction of them and other documents.
	I have gone through the process at some length. I recognise the right hon. Gentleman's concerns, as does the Land Registry, and I hope that what I have said this evening has gone a long way towards reassuring him and his constituent.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Adjourned accordingly at thirteen minutes to Seven o'clock.